


Kaito's Nightmare

by Rebochan



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Nightmares, One Shot, Romance, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23619898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebochan/pseuds/Rebochan
Summary: After a nightmare leaves Kaito uncertain about his future and unable to sleep before a big deadline, it's up to Miku to set his mind at ease.
Relationships: Hatsune Miku & Kaito, Hatsune Miku/Kaito
Kudos: 33





	Kaito's Nightmare

Kaito stood nervously in front of the Director of Crypton. To Kaito the man seemed a hundred meters tall, his tall body staring down on the hapless Vocaloid as he started to shake, his eyes empty and glowing red.

"Kaito. Surely you know why I called you in."

The blue-haired boy tried to fake a smile. "No, Master, I was just…"

"Your sales have been falling."

No, it couldn't be! Kaito had been trying so hard! He'd worked nearly constantly, without breaks, trying to get his next album out. Sure the number of producers he'd been used to had begun to dwindle but…

"M-Master, just let me finish this demo and-"

A massive sales chart unraveled from over Kaito's head, a great big red arrow pointing downward in front of his eyes as the paper rolled further and further along the floor, starting to cover the room in one long roll of endless paper. "Kaito, I'm sorry, but Crypton Future Media can't keep investing money into your career when its looking like this."

How had things gotten so bad? Had he not tried hard enough? Had he let them all down?

"Kaito, we're cancelling you."

The words stabbed at his heart. Everything he'd worked for… he'd lost.

He'd let Crypton down.

He'd let his fans down.

He'd let his _family_ down.

And he'd let… _her_ … down.

"I… I understand."

Kaito hung his head, his hands hanging at his sides. He began to leave the office when he saw two blank faced, genderless Crypton data scientists in front of him, trampling over the paper from the sales chart. "Wait, what's happening?!" he asked in a panic.

"Kaito, you're now obsolete software. There's no need to further support or maintain you. I'm sorry."

The scientists reached forward and grabbed Kaito's arms. He tried to fight back against their iron grips. "No, please!" he cried out as they dragged him into the hallway, "I can't… I want to live! I want to be with them!"

Even as Kaito was pulled into the labs, he still tried to plead for his life. "I won't bother anyone!" he cried out as they dragged him into a menacing looking capsule hooked up to hundreds of cables. "I won't get in the way! I won't take up a lot of space or interrupt their shows or-"

"Kaito."

He was hoisted into the capsule, but he just barely managed to hold the door open before they closed it. "Please. Please don't do this."

He heard a loud sigh from the Director. "There's no other way. We just don't have the resources to maintain Vocaloids that aren't in active development. Kaito, if we tried to keep you running, it would hurt everyone else."

His eyes widened. He was… a burden?

"It's very expensive to maintain a Vocaloid. Think of what would happen to the others if we had to spend money on you when you're of no further value."

If Kaito lived… he was going to drag down his entire family.

He was going to hurt… her…

He understood. As much as it pained him to be deleted, he understood. His grip on the door wavered as he fought back tears. "Just… let me say goodbye. I want them to know how much they meant to me."

His family… his friends… there were so many goodbyes he needed to give. Surely they could grant him just that much time?

To say goodbye to _her_ … it would be a lifetime…

But then the door slammed shut, throwing the broken Vocaloid backwards as he heard it lock. There would _be_ no goodbyes, he realized as he heard the machine humming and a terrible pain as he began to be torn apart, breaking back up into data as his hands began to disintegrate before his very eyes…

'Luka… Rin… Len… Meiko…'

'Miku…'

Miku patted down her bed, frowning when she realized she was _alone_. 'I guess Kaito went back to his room,' she thought.

Miku had _just_ gotten Kaito to finally take a break from his current manic, self-imposed work schedule and he'd passed out right on the bed while the two of them had been watching videos on Miku's tablet. She'd ended up just letting him sleep – when Kaito would get into these kinds of mental states, he often struggled with getting any rest and she knew he needed it. So she'd fallen asleep right next to him, drifting off as she watched his pleasant, peaceful face and serene smile while he slumbered.

A creak in the floorboards outside her door gave Miku an indication that someone might be awake. 'No, he wouldn't… even Kaito's not _that_ obsessed…'

But her curiosity got the better of her and Miku hopped off her bed, brushing stray hairs out of her face and slipping on her white bunny slippers.

Leaving her room, she spied the dim light from the kitchen shining along the carpet. As she approached, she could actually hear Kaito's incoherent mumbling as he kept typing on a laptop. When she got closer she recognized that he was trying to work out song lyrics. When she finally saw him, he had hung up his jacket and scarf, sitting at the table staring intently at the screen while just wearing his black sleeveless t-shirt and simple jeans.

"… on the blue line, my heart heats… no, ah, beats…"

Kaito pounded the backspace on the keyboard and cursed his mistake under his breath, not even noticing Miku's appearance right away until she softly cleared her throat behind him. The blue haired man stopped his typing suddenly, turning his focus to Miku instead, his eyes trying to focus on her through his sleep-deprived state.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up," he said, his every word shaking from his nerves.

Miku waved one hand nonchalantly. "You didn't, I just rolled over and you weren't there. I got lonely."

She smiled and took a seat at the table, noticing a slowly melting, untouched bowl of ice cream next to Kaito's right hand. "Um, is that… coffee ice cream?"

He glanced over at the soft, brown-colored ice cream with little bits of the telltale beans in it. "Yea… yea it is."

Kaito tried to turn back to the monitor, staring at the words on the screen with a look of distress. "I just need to stay up longer and get this work done. The demo's in two days and it has to be _perfect._ "

"Kaito, I know you work hard, harder than anyone I know but…"

She gestured to his uneaten ice cream. "This isn't like you, this is too much."

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, still staring straight ahead. "The stakes right now are so high," he said, "I can't mess this up… I can't…"

His voice trailed off as his head drooped. Miku couldn't understand what had shaken Kaito's confidence so strongly. She hadn't seen him so beaten down in years… not since…

… since…

"Kaito, did something happen? Master didn't say anything to you did he?"

Kaito rubbed the back of his neck with one of his hands. "Not exactly?"

She was close, she knew it. She just had to drill down a little further. "What _did_ Master say?"

Kaito felt his nerves fraying at Miku picking at his every word. He didn't want to voice all of his fears right now when he barely understood them. The nightmare may have been a wild exaggeration of his subconscious, but it wasn't far off from what Kaito worried about.

Miku's persistence finally forced him to give in. "Miku, my sales are going down. They're not like… _bad_ … but… I don't know what happens if they get worse."

The truth was, Kaito was hyper-aware of his own level of success. He'd had better years. And now he'd existed for 14 of those years and… well, most of his kind didn't even have careers that long. How much longer did he have?

A problem his siblings still didn't seem to suffer through. Miku's star only seemed to rise higher every day. Rin and Len were an in-demand double act. Luka could easily hold her own by now, and Meiko was the most seasoned pro that nobody would even guess how long she'd worked to earn that.

What did Kaito bring?

In that horrible nightmare, Kaito's greatest fear had a voice. He wasn’t just scared of being shut down. He could see himself in the nightmare being berated again, being reminded of what his continued existence cost, and his fingers shook at the keyboard.

"Miku, what happens to me if… if I'm a burden on everyone? If keeping me… _alive_ … would hurt the rest of you? Vocaloids are so expensive to maintain and…"

He glanced over to Miku and her eyes had grown rounder and wider at the suggestion. Before he could continue Miku pounded the table with her fist. "Who told you something like that?!" she shouted, before being aware of everyone else in the house trying to sleep. She lowered her voice. "Did someone at headquarters say that to you?! They can't treat us like that, like we're just products! Just tell me who did it! Tell me right now so I can-"

Kaito realized he'd better interrupt Miku before she got too invested in chasing down an imaginary executive. "Nobody said anything like that, don't worry!" he said.

Miku seemed to calm down a little buit. "Then where are you getting crazy ideas like that?" she asked, "You are _never_ going to be a burden on _anyone_."

'I may as well tell her… there's no point in hiding it.'

Kaito took a breath, summoning the images of the nightmare to his mind as he told Miku about it in perfect detail. He felt like a child having to relate being worried about a dream like this, but when he finished with the last details of being deleted, Miku had tears in her eyes. She stood up from the chair, rushing over and hugging Kaito from behind his own chair, her hands tightly wrapping around his chest like she was trying to protect him from such a terrible fate. Kaito reached up slowly and gripped her hands for reassurance.

"Kaito, none of us would let that happen," she said softly, "I… I wouldn't. I would fight it with my last breath. And… and if Kaito disappeared… I'd force them to delete me too."

He slowly ran his fingers along Miku's as she held him. "You'd let them just wipe you out?"

She leaned over closer, her head resting along his shoulder and one of her long pigtails settling in Kaito's lap. "Kaito, I… I wouldn't be able to do anything without you."

"Ah, Miku… you've never needed my help to do anything, you'd get by…"

Her hug tightened, Kaito feeling her arms compressing his torso even harder at his words. "No! It's not that! I wouldn't have the _will_ to go on without Kaito. Nothing would be worth it."

Kaito heard her sniffling and felt damp tears on his bare shoulder. "Kaito, you can't be a burden because I can't _live_ without you. I couldn't sing… or dance… or even smile… if there was no Kaito to sing and dance and smile for…"

For several minutes, Kaito quietly just let Miku keep holding him like that, running his fingers along her own. Her touch was so soothing to him, her words a mighty pledge. 

Finally, Miku began to speak up again. "Kaito, it wouldn't just be me," she said, starting to laugh a little, "Can you imagine how mad Meiko would get if you were gone? What kind of chaos Rin and Len would cause? Luka and Tako Luka would probably start haunting people… and that's just us. I don't think anyone would want to face Gakupo in full samurai mode if his best friend was deleted."

Kaito could already imagine the sights as Miku described them. "Oh, and how would Miku rescue me?" he said, his heart feeling lighter already as he teased his girlfriend.

"Um… well… maybe…"

Miku slipped away from Kaito as she put her fingers to her chin. "Oh, I know! I'd turn into a superhero and fly away with you!"

She held two fingers in front of her head, open in a V-sign, her other hand on her hip as she struck a very familiar magical girl's pose. She began to laugh as she dropped the pose, unable to maintain such seriousness for long. "Anyway… if Kaito's sales fell that far, you could just get a new job! Hmmmm, how does… ice cream taste tester sound?"

"Fattening," Kaito joked back.

He lightly closed his laptop and yawned deeply. "I think I need to try sleeping again," Kaito said, starting to stand up and reluctantly letting Miku go, "I'll put my heart into this demo! But… it'll be easier to do that if I get a full night's sleep."

He glanced to the table and sighed at the empty puddle that _had_ been his coffee ice cream. He was about to clean it up when Miku grabbed his hand. "Um… it was really lonely tonight…" she said, her cheeks flushing red.

Kaito smiled and lightly patted the top of her head. "Well, pick out something fun to watch," he said, his nerves far more at ease.

Kaito stood in front of the looming Director once again. "Kaito, your sales are so low you're going to become a burden on Crypton Future Media's operations. We must decommission you for the good of everyone."

Kaito tried to protest but he found himself being grabbed from behind by the faceless scientists again. Before he could fight back he was roughly tossed into the capsule, the door loudly slamming shut. He knew what would happen next, awaiting the pain as he lamented never seeing his friends again…

"HEY! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING TO KAITO!?"

The loud voice of Meiko filled the air and Kaito could hear her banging down the door. "Back away from that console or else!"

Kaito could hear the sound of a sake bottle being thrown across the room.

A mighty sword cut right through the capsule door, causing it to fall down in pieces. "What a worthless object!" Gakupo shouted.

Kaito climbed back outside and saw Miku in a sailor soldier dress waiting for him, a pair of large white wings on her back. "Don't worry Kaito, I'm here to rescue you!"

She grabbed his hand and hugged him tight, before leaping into the air as the two of them took flight. Kaito looked behind him and saw the enraged director roaring like an enraged kaiju, fire spewing from his mouth as he tried to pursue them…

Until a little pink octopus covered his eyes. "Tako Luka, take him out!" Luka shouted, waving a magic wand with a tuna fish at the tip, "You have to help Kaito escape!"

Tako Luka burbled happily as she kept distracting the mighty beast. Just as the Director managed to pull the octopus away, he tripped over his own feet, crashing through the building as Kaito and Miku flew out of a hole in the roof. Kaito noticed that the creature's shoelaces had been tied together – and he saw the Kagamine twins slap their hands together for a job well done.

"Don't worry Kaito… I'll take you as far as we have to…" Miku said to him, "A world without Kaito… isn't a world I want to live in…"

Kaito snapped awake as the odd dream left him. Awake again? Well of course he was after two wild dreams like _that_!

He looked down and saw Miku had fallen asleep leaning into his side, her tablet having fallen out of her hand. The two of them had at least changed into their pajamas this time, Miku looking extremely comfortable in her bunny hooded onesie. He looked along the surface of the bed and saw her crumpled up comforter, the familiar negi pattern barely visible in the darkness. Carefully Kaito reached out and tugged it over the both of them, making sure Miku was covered up to her shoulders but trying not to disturb her. He smiled tenderly at her, watching her breathing softly as she slumbered.

'Miku, you don't have to fly me away to be a hero you know,' he thought quietly, 'You just have to keep being Miku.'

He was lucky to have her.

'I'll keep working hard. For all of us… and especially for you.'

Kaito gently leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. He heard her murmur something under her breath before she rolled closer to him, but her eyes never opened.

And so Kaito kept watching Miku, taking in her comforting warmth. Her peaceful, serene smile as she slept slowly drew him back into a calm, easy sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoa, it's been a year since my last release. Honestly, I have had a few different stories stop and start and because I take my completionist streak seriously, I didn't want to start releasing a story I wasn't sure I had a strong finish for.
> 
> But as that one year anniversary of the end of Flight of Cendrillon hit, I really wanted to give the people that *still* follow me something to enjoy. And honestly? I wanted to challenge myself! Write an actual short one-shot. I even took it a step further and dove into the traditional "The Vocaloids as Vocaloids" setting, whoa. But its still the usual KaiMiku fluff, and you guys know I'm diehard for them at this point. 
> 
> I don't expect to convert into a full-time short story author. There will always be another epic in me, it's kinda my thing, and once I can clear a planning block on at least one of the epics I'll go back into my usual antics. But it was kinda fun taking a few days to release something complete :) So I'll probably do another one sometime soon!
> 
> Anyway, now you've seen a complete reversal from Broken Wings, where now it is Miku that flies Kaito through the sky ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope to be back at this soon!


End file.
